Wednesday, August 27, 2014

Lists of Common & Not-So-Common Items to Label for Back-to-School This Year

Thank you to Kidecals for providing sample personalized dishwasher-safe and washing machine-safe labels for our back-to-school checklists. All opinions expressed are my own.

Our children began school today! I spent the last two weeks trying to be as prepared as possible for this day. With three children, that means we have 3 classroom supplies lists, 3 classroom wishlists, and basically 3 times as much of everything to buy and label. No matter how prepared I think I am, I always forget something! For example, I almost sent my youngest son to school today without his eyeglasses, which he would need to see the white board. Luckily, my husband remembered right as he was walking out the door. Phew!

For me, the last step in preparing for back-to-school is labeling everything. I've spent all this money buying school supplies, new clothes, new shoes, and more, so it would be silly for me not to take this extra step to ensure that the items are not lost or stolen. I used to have different kinds of labels for different items. Some labels would be dishwasher-safe for things like water bottles and such. Other labels would be washing machine-safe for labeling shoes, hoodies, and the like. This year, I used customized school labels from Kidecals.com. What I love about these labels is that each label is both dishwasher-safe and washing machine and dryer-safe. No more having separate labels for different types of items!

My children were able to choose the label designs they liked best from a vast selection and customized the text and sometimes the color to reflect their individual personalities. My oldest son's labels say his name and ". . . student by day, ninja by night!" underneath it instead of the phone number shown on the website. I thought that was pretty darn cool that he could say what he wanted on his labels!

I opted for an Everyday Set of labels for each child. For $21, this set includes 36 labels (12 two inch and 24 one inch). That's enough labels to last each child at least two years, which is a great value. Also, everything ships free on Kidecals.com!

While it was fresh in my mind, I compiled two lists to share . . . one of all the basic things you should label for your child for back-to-school and one of all the things you may never have thought to label.